It may be cheap for an Xbox 360 game but Infernal: Hell's Vengeance is far from cheerful. In fact it's one of the worst games ever to appear on the 360. Heck, any recent console. Where to start then? Forget the plot – some hokum about a war between heaven and hell – let's start with the controls.

This is a third-person shooter – think Gears of War – so you would hope that basics like aim and cover would be well implemented? Wrong. Aiming is stupidly sensitive, sucking the fun from even basic gaming pleasures like accurate blasting. The cover controls are more infuriating. It's far too easy to get stuck in cover and tricky to get out when needed. Neither of which are helpful when you have the demonic hordes bearing down on you. Other inconsistencies include enemy corpses – a vital ammo supply – that disappear far too quickly and some stupidly illogical puzzles.

The game looks dated too. Sparse backdrops and bland character animations are everywhere. If you do persevere, then make sure you manually save as checkpoints – included in 99.9% of console gamers – appear to be absent. Battling your way through a level only to die and restart from the beginning was tiresome when gaming in the 80s, although at least you expected it then. For the same thing to happen in a 2009 release is shocking. Luckily you'll probably give up long before this becomes an issue, such is the tedious nature of the action.

Positives? Well, some of the abilities you pick up during play are vaguely interesting, particularly teleportation. But obvious signposting about when to use specific skills means that even this small trickle of fun dries up.

It would be great to think that Infernal is a pastiche on brainless videogames. But sadly even the most brainless shooters – Wolfenstein being a recent example – have more depth, excitement and soul than this. Infernal: Hell's Vengeance deserves to rot.